How to use a 3 map’s (floors)

[jeroen]

My first attempt for a Pano2VR project with a map. It’s about a church in my home-town. This project is going to show the church before and after the redecoration. This redecoration is in progress at the moment so I only can show you the "before" part.

On http://www.virtuelewandeling.nl/amersfoort/xaverius/ you can see my work in pogress. This tour does have 13 panorama’s and is build wit about 1300 pictures. I have used a Canon 5D Mark II with 17-40 f/4L, PTGui and of course Pano2VR.

The question:
On my virtual tour I want to show 3 maps. The website where this panorama will be shown only offers me a size of only 700x500 pixels so the maps should be opened manually. So far no problems. When I press the I button (thanks to hum@no.id) the first map pops up. This is the easy part.

But what about the second and third floor? I would love to "dim" the first floor and put the second floor image on top if you do a mouse over the hotspot on second floor. I can do this by using a

Code: Select all

mouse leave Hide Element "Second Floor"

But when I click the hotspot I need to do something like

Code: Select all

Mouse Click Show Element "Second Floor"

The mouse leave is always "winning" it from the Mouse Click; so the second floor disappears.

I hope you understand what I try to explain and have a solution for it. If not I always can try to sketch one map with three floors in it; but it’s a little bit hard to get 13 hotspots in a small map.

To make things more clear I show the tree maps

First floor


Second floor (the blue area is transparent)


Third floor (the blue area is transparent)

[zap]

Hi

Why not try to create 3 tours.
One for each floor and you add in the skin a button where the user selects floor 1 / 2 or 3 opening the new panorama tour with the new map

This way no hazzle with too many hotspots and skins get easier too.

Other more complex solution:
Create 3 containers with 3 different maps and hotspots hiding-showing once the user clicks on the corresponding skin button element.

Cheers

[jeroen]

Thanks zap four your reaction.

I was hoping for one tour; the two upper-flours are not that interesting; I tried to do it with three containers. I struggle a little more this afternoon. Hoped I missed a a clever future or something

[erik leeman]

Can't you just move one single map image between floors somehow?

I mean, make an image with all floorplans next to each other, then move only that part of the image into view that has the correct floor (+hotspots).
I know we can't use masks (yet), but still something like this should be possible.
One added advantage would be that the map image needs to be downloaded just once for all floors.

Cheers!

Erik

[jeroen]

Erik,
Thanks for your response.

Clever solution ; Instead of turning off two maps and turning on one map (3 actions) I can do one move (1 action). The only problem I have is that the normal panorama is eq 700x500 pixels; what happens if It goes full screen? And is there any difference between my 12” notebook and/or my 23” desktop?

I will try it & report back. Else I going to make instead of one button “map” 3 buttons; a button for every floor. (Hope I can make as nice buttons as hum@no.id’s Reflection v2).

Btw; strange to talk a foreign langue to a fellow Dutch, while talking in our language is much more easy

[zap]

Clever solution ; Instead of turning off two maps and turning on one map (3 actions) I can do one move (1 action). The only problem I have is that the normal panorama is eq 700x500 pixels; what happens if It goes full screen? And is there any difference between my 12” notebook and/or my 23” desktop?

Hi 3 actions yes but can be set to only one user click.
700x500 = quite small for fullscreen = pixelated
the wider the screen, the more pixelated it gets.

to eric : Agree that you have to load images only once but you will load them in the first panorama.
the most important once as visitors will switch away if it takes to long.
Using 3 different images makes loading equally fast/slow for all swf while loading all on the first one makes first one loading slow and the folowing faster.

One has to choose what is preferable.


Cheers

[erik leeman]

Agree that you have to load images only once but you will load them in the first panorama.
the most important once as visitors will switch away if it takes to long.

True!

Using 3 different images makes loading equally fast/slow for all swf while loading all on the first one makes first one loading slow and the folowing faster.

Well, much depends on how you tie them to the panos I think. If the maps (or whatever graphics) are listed in the skin of the first panorama of a linked series, I suppose they are all downloaded with the first panorama. And that can take too much time. If the panoramas are linked as seperate nodes, NOT sharing the same skin, then the accompanying images are downloaded separately too. But then you also have to access a complete skin with each pano. That means not only separate downloads, but also transfers in memory each time so Flash can show them, even if the skins are the same. I'm really not sure what the fastest way would be to get those panos on someones screen.
I do think that downloading and opening just one larger image file comprising several pictures (within reasonable limits) should be faster then downloading and opening them seperately. But I don't know if this is (always) really so.

Erik

[360Texas]

Another question might be... if all are in the first ... does the panorama start and the others download in the background. Or does the visitor have to wait for ALL to download before the first is displayed.

Just reading all your comments and doing some quiet head scratch thinking

[Hopki]

Hi chaps
Like Dave just looking, as another thought to cut down loading all the images in the first pano you could create three sets.

Create all the ground floor panos and a ground floor skin.
Then create the 1st floor and skin for that, then the 2nd.

Create an html page for each set, ground floor, 1st and 2nd.

In each skin, use a tab/button to open the html page for each floor.


What will happen is when you first click on the tour, ground floor pano opens loading only the first pano and skin with the ground floor graphics.
Click 1st will load 1st floor skin and clicking 2nd will load 2nd floor skin.

Up side - This way only the skin for that floor you want to look at is loaded.
Down side – Can only use full screen for a floor, clicking to open a new floor/html page will force the pano back to normal size.

Mind you how big is the floor plan

All the best Hopki

[erik leeman]

Perhaps an effective strategy would be to let a visitor first open a dummy panorama, so the skin with all the 'excess luggage' is already sent over before the first real pano is accessed? Should not be too hard to make something attractive and informative that could be used as a vehicle?

Erik

[jeroen]

@zap: "700x500 = quite small for fullscreen = pixelated"
Yes you are right; I was hoping to use the panorama on two websites; one of the church in low res (700x500) and on my own; full screen. Preferaly only changing the window-size. (I was trying to keep my story short )

@erik leeman: "start with dummy panorama"
Very clever again. In this example I can start the tour outside the chruch; using low(er)-res; and increasing the resolution when I go inside the building (opening second and third pano). I have to look into this.

@Hopki: "In each skin, use a tab/button to open the html page for each floor."
I'm trying to use the panorama’s in a CMS (Joomla); when I accessing the pano's via HTML I have to use the name used by the CMS. When a user change the page name (very easy to do) the links will not work anymore. I know the flash files have to point to each other to; but I expect that user will not move the flash-files to another directory as quickly as changing a name of a page). I hope to be a webmaster of this site only for a year or less...

The idea of using a tab/button to open a floor I do like. I hope to make more pano's in the same church; There are more areas in this church who urgently need to "meet" my camera; So the number of hotspots will increase (the size of the floor plan also).

@Hopki: "Mind you how big is the floor plan"
About 355x356 pixels. In my first post you can see the three plans. The main problem is the size of the pano in the current website (700x400 pix) so I have to keep the floor plan small.

@Dave: "does the panorama start and the others download in the background"
I’m afraid not; I am a trained software developer; (but trying to make a living with pictures since January the first). Perhaps I should dive into flash (but to be honest I do not want to learn a complete new environment/language like flash if possible; I want to make pictures )

@Dave: "Just reading all your comments and doing some quiet head scratch thinking"
With that aspect I can help you with

@all: thanks for your reactions; I have some ideas to continue.
unfortunately one of my web servers went down; I need to collect it today so this project is postponed to Monday I'll report back